US had a good Olympics, or did it?

Americans won 28 medals but faltered in traditional winter sports

Canada beats The USA in the Women's Hockey Gold Medal Game 3-2 in overtime. USA players Anne Schleper and Michelle Picard can't believe they lost as Canada reacts to the final goal scored by Marie-Philip Poulin of Canada.
— Sean M. Haffey

Canada beats The USA in the Women's Hockey Gold Medal Game 3-2 in overtime. USA players Anne Schleper and Michelle Picard can't believe they lost as Canada reacts to the final goal scored by Marie-Philip Poulin of Canada.
— Sean M. Haffey

SOCHI, Russia  Julie Chu carried the U.S. flag in Closing Ceremony on Sunday as the Sochi Olympics came to an end.

It was an appropriate choice, Chu being the perfect embodiment of these Games for Team USA – the quintessential Olympian in terms of character and morals, and unrealized expectations. She is the face of a women’s hockey that won a silver medal but suffered arguably the biggest collapse in the sport’s history, up two goals inside four minutes to go against rival Canada, lost 3-2 in overtime.

“We wanted to win a gold medal, I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Chu said cheerily. “That’s always our dream. We want to be the best. And we came up just short the other night.”

And so it went for Team USA over the previous 17 days. A lot of medals, a lot of coming up short.

There are two ways to spin the U.S. performance, one, of course, being by simply counting medals. The 28 total, which ranked behind only Russia’s 33, are the most at a Winter Games outside North America. The nine golds are one short of the U.S. record.

“Our athletes have come here and competed hard,” said Alan Ashley, the USOC’s chief of sport performance. “There are always times at the Olympics where you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I wish so and so had done better.’ But at the same there are a whole new generation of athletes, a whole new group of athletes, that will surprise you.”

The other way: If the International Olympic Committee doesn’t add 12 events to the 2014 program, we’re writing the obituary of U.S. winter sports.

Related

Team USA won a record 37 medals in Vancouver. In those same events, they won 19 in Sochi.

Team USA won 14.3 percent of the total medals in Vancouver. It won 9.5 percent in Sochi, its lowest since 1998.

The low-water mark for U.S. participation in Winter Olympics is considered Calgary in 1988, when Americans won two gold and six total medals. The late George Steinbrenner was so incensed, so embarrassed, that he launched a commission to overhaul the USOC.

In the same events in Sochi as the Calgary program: three golds, nine total medals. Five in alpine skiing, a gold in ice dancing, two bronzes in men’s bobsled, a bronze in women’s luge. That’s it.

Figure skating finished off the podium in ladies, men’s and pairs for the first time since 1936. Long track speed skating won no medals for the first time in 30 years. Cross country, biathlon and ski jumping were shut out again. The men’s hockey team lost 5-0 to Finland in the bronze medal game.

Some will argue that medals in traditional sports with histories that go back nearly a century carry more weight and prestige than the latest gimmicky freestyle skiing event that involves athletes you’d never heard of but is filled with NASCAR crashes that play well on TV.

The USOC doesn’t see it that way. Medals are medals, and funding in recent years has increasingly been based on a “bang for the buck” mentality. And Team USA has an inherent advantage in new sports, in terms of familiarity and facilities.

“It was really fun to watch the new events that were introduced here in Sochi,” Ashley said, “and I think they have proven to be a fantastic model for how Team USA did in those events ... It’s a wise move by some of our partners. (U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association), for example, they saw slopestyle was gong to be here, they had great athletes and they set a system in place so our athletes could perform and put their best foot forward.

“It’s more strategic than anything else.”

Of the 30 medals available in new events, Americans won nine – a staggering 30 percent.

There is a historical pattern, though. In recent Games, American athletes often do well in the early years after a sport is introduced, before the rest of the world can catch up. They won eight of 12 medals in men’s snowboard halfpipe after it was added in 1998, and none in Sochi. They won at least one medal in every Games since men’s moguls skiing was added in 1992, and none in Sochi.

The danger is turning the medals table into a Ponzi scheme, relying on the constant addition of new events to keep up the numbers.

The counterargument from the USOC is that the medal table is becoming more “diversified,” which is only partly true. More countries might be winning more medals, but the same countries are winning them. Twenty-six nations won medals in Sochi, just as they did in Vancouver and Torino. Twenty-four won medals in 1998, but with 30 fewer events.

“It’s a great thing for sports, a great thing for the Olympic movement,” Ashley said. “I love the competition. I think it’s fantastic.”